CinemaCon wrap-up: Brace Your Box Office

What happened in Vegas ain't stayin' in Vegas, not when it comes to movies. Last week, film exhibitors and distributors crammed into Caesar's Palace for their annual ballyhoo, and the chance to feast their eyes on what's coming over the next year...and beyond.

Clash of the Titans
Without a doubt, the films that got the biggest response were Godzilla and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Godzilla had theater owners smelling a colossal hit, and the footage from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - now in a more post-apocalyptic environment - has everyone in consensus that this sequel will out-perform the original.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is definitely the most heavily promoted film of the summer. It's certainly buying a place at the table, and should reap big box office, but it didn't evoke the frenzy that Apes and Godzilla unleashed.

Things to Come
Another major needle-mover was the Jon Hamm baseball picture (set in India), Million Dollar Arm, which Disney Chairman Alan Horn boasts as the highest-testing movie he's had under his watch. Hamm received the excellence in acting award and Disney confidently screened the complete film.

Audiences got a peak at Gone Girl and Fifty Shades of Grey, which is somewhat awkwardly being marketed as a romance. Director Angelina Jolie should fare particularly well this year with Unbroken, which showed some very well-received footage (it's written by Joel and Ethan Coen), earning it the early pole position as an Oscar favorite.

Disney held off on any Star Wars reveals, saving them for the future. Instead, they were elated to sneak five minutes of 2015's Inside Out, a Pixar film set within a young girl's mind - her emotions - Joy, Fear, Sadness and Anger - are the film's characters.

The Visionary
Christopher Nolan made it abundantly clear he's not forsaking film stock for digital - Paramount no longer sends out domestic film prints, but made an exception for Nolan's Interstellar, opening this November. Nolan is one of the few remaining directors who shoots exclusively on celluloid, utilizing Imax cameras, which he used to a greater degree on Interstellar than any film he's shot previously. "I think the technical aspect of how this film is presented is going to be more important than on any film I've done before...I grew up in an era that was the golden age of the blockbuster, when something we might call a family film could have universal appeal. That's something I want to see again. In terms of the tone of the film, it looks at where we are as a people and has a universality about human experience." Nolan also revealed he chose to use practical locations rather than CGI as much as possible. Remembering boyhood film experiences such as Star Wars and a reissue of 2001: A Space Odyssey, "I remember very clearly the feeling of magnitude and otherworldly experience. I had no idea what the film meant, but it didn't matter to me in the slightest."

So there you have it - 2014 looks to be a record year at the box office, with 2015 already biting at its heels. Summer gets an early start this year, with Captain America: The Winter Soldier opening in just three days.